A New Season
Six years.
It feels so long, and yet not long at all. I started BLANK when I was in my early twenties as a reaction to what I didn’t want to do anymore: I didn’t want to build strategy in the ‘productized’ format I was being encouraged to, I wanted to do ‘cultural strategy’ - which then felt like a foreign practice area, and I wanted to infuse theory in my work. For a long while, being an entrepreneur felt like the best thing ever: the highs were high, but man were the lows low. But I always had this itchy feeling - and I’d say it often out loud too: “I don’t know if building a 20-person design studio is necessarily what I want to do on my own.”
As seasons change, so do our paths.
I started BLANK because being an entrepreneur is in my blood - my dad is a restauranteur, and I have many fond memories of helping him: hostessing, writing menu copy…you name it. The seeds of my want to build a studio were sown in a desire for autonomy and a belief in a different approach to strategy. The traditional agency model felt stifling with its rigid structures and myopic focus. I yearned to create a space where I could blend my diverse experiences – personal, professional, and academic – into a unique strategic perspective. I wanted to be close to the work, close to the people approving the work, and to build.
The daunting challenges of running a business tempered the thrill of building something from scratch. Yet, with each hurdle I overcame, my confidence grew. The business thrived, exceeding my wildest expectations. What began as a solo endeavor (me with a laptop in my living room) blossomed into a full-fledged studio, boasting a team of Designers, Strategists, and more. At one point I had 25 people on a set and while I should have felt like, “I’ve made it. Look what I can do…” I almost only felt dread and a fear that I was forgetting something, that something would go left, or that someone would be unhappy.
But the work was better than ever. We worked on everything from Climate Tech to Wellness and Beauty. Churning out hit after hit. My friends would always say, “How do you do it?” Truthfully? I don’t have an answer. But as the studio grew, I felt like I started growing away from my studio. Our initial focus on social media – while remarkably successful for the business, growing it on average 140% year over year felt icky (because I’m divided on social’s potential for good even more so, now.) And, I felt like I was being tasked to solve problems I couldn’t fairly solve - meaty, upstream existential business problems that needed serious brand strategy and design help. So I brought branding into our stable of services. And it helped – for a while. But yet there was a lingering voice in the back of my head that something wasn’t right. The more time I spent building the business, the less time I felt I could spend on just… Strategy.
Things came to a head this summer when I stared down the barrel of the halfway point of this year and felt that something had to change. I didn’t know if it was an apartment, friendships, or my work. Work felt the easiest to solve, and I asked myself, “What if…you went back to full-time? What might that look like?” I felt like I had gotten too deep into my head, my own baby ecosystem, my own echo chamber, and it had to change.
My list was a snippet of the below:
Autonomy
Trust
Entrepreneurial environment
Grow the practice
Equity/investment in the success of the business
Bigger clients, but a mix of small ones
Emphasis on strategy/design/systems
A week later, a recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn. Ironically, I knew one of the founders of the studio recruiting for the role – and we were meant to connect nearly a year before this fateful moment in July. Manny was one of those people I always saw on my feed, but didn’t really know.
Several interviews followed, and in early September I was invited to come onto the team for a residency.
Suddenly, something clicked and it felt right. The existential fog I’d been wading through for maybe eighteen months cleared, my practice felt clearer than ever, and I have learned so much in the last three months.
All of this is to say…I’ll be joining U.N.N.A.M.E.D. as a Strategy Director, tasked with growing, shaping, and leading the strategy practice. It’s been a big transition for me to take a leap away from a business that in some ways defined a defining decade of my life, but every day affirms me that this was the right step to take.
BLANK will be going on hiatus, but I always want to meet founders who are building what is new and what is next. If the last season was about walking away from things I wanted less of, this season is about walking towards the things I want more of.
If I can leave you with some advice – I’d say this:
Everyone should be an entrepreneur even once.
Walking away isn’t a failure.
The vision is the vision, the vessel can change.
Careers are not linear paths.
Every season is a lesson.
Stay tuned for more,
N
P.S. The irony of leaving a studio called BLANK to join one called U.N.N.A.M.E.D is not lost on me.
Congrats Nikita!
Congrats Nikita! Been following your writings for a while now, happy for you!